American Idol Insurance

Dear Writer,

To finish up imposter syndrome week at Dear Writer, I wanted to talk to you about American Idol.

Yes. American Idol.

Because all of this, “I’m fabulous, I’m good enough as I am, I’m a great writer,” stuff is almost always accompanied by the memory of those people who tried out for American Idol thinking they were great, and they were demonstrably not great, and they were humiliated and mocked in front of the entire country.

There are a lot of fears that come with creating things, but the biggest one is, “What if I suck and I don’t know it?” I mean, that’s why we tell ourselves we suck, right? We’re just buying a little American Idol insurance, right? It’s okay to suck if at least we know it, right?

I mean, yes.

And no.

It’s okay to suck if we know it. And it’s okay to suck if we don’t know it.

It’s just okay to suck.

The only path to good work is through bad work. You cannot be good at something until you have been bad at it. Being bad is not a humiliation; it’s a rite of passage. Those people who tried out for American Idol weren’t pitiable because they sucked. They were pitiable because they were too fragile to allow themselves to suck. They had to believe they were great in order to justify doing the work.

But you don’t need that. You are not fragile. You are not an imposter.

You are a writer.

And you will write truly terrible things, as we all do. Your favorite writer has written total crap before, but they didn’t let that stop them, and that’s how they became your favorite writer.

So don’t let it stop you.

Go forth, Dear Writer, and suck.

It’s the only way.

Everything,

L